January 1910 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto

Arthur Balfour's Election Address

It is understood that Parliament will be dissolved early in 1910; and I shall then solicit
the renewal of the confidence which you bestowed on me in such generous measure nearly four
years ago. The immediate occasion of the dissolution is the resolution of the House of Lords
that the country should be consulted upon the Budget proposals of 1909. The Budget, therefore,
is the subject primarily before the constituencies, and it might have been supposed that the
alternative methods of raising money necessary to meet the obligations of the Treasury
would have been the topic most deepy interesting to Government. For motives not difficult
to conjecture this does not seem to be the case. It is not the merits of the Budget about
which they are concerned; it is that those merits should be submitted to the judgement of
the people and (bitterest of all) submitted at the instance of the Upper House. There may
be good reason for their irritation; but assuredly they are not reasons drawn either from
the letter or the spirit of the British Constitution; nor are they based on those more
general principles of government common to representative institutions in the best types
of modern democracy.

The claim of the Government, stripped of the bad history and bad law with which it is
obscured, is simplicity itself. They hold that the House of Commons, no matter how elected,
or when elected, nor matter what its relation to public opinion of the moment, is to be
the uncontrolled master of the fortunes of every class in the community; and that to the
community itself no appeak, even in the extreme cases, is to be allowed to lie. The question,
be it noted, is not whether the Second Chamber may orignate money Bills, for that has
never been raised; nor whether they may amend money Bills, for that has not been raised;
nor raised are three

May there not be occastions on which an appeal to the people on matters of
finance is necessary?

Is not this one of them?

If these questions be answered in the affirmative, does any other machinery
exist for securing such an appeal than that which has been set in motion by
the House of Lords?

In the United States of America it is a fundamental principle of the Constitution that no
king of property shall be prejudiced by special taxation. That Constitution is not easily
changed; and before a measure like the British Budget could be legally attempted the consent
must be obtained of a two-thirds majority in both Houses, nor could any such measure become
law without a national mandate from a still stronger majority of the country.

If we suggest the impossible, and imagine these constitutional safeguards withdraw, would
the American taxpayer ever then be reduced to the precarious position of his British brother.
Far from it. Special taxation might, indeed, by imposed by the House of Representatives,
but it could be rejected by the Senate, it could be vetoes by the President.

I do not ask the British citizen should enjoy the same security for his property as the
citizen of the United States. I am not so immoderate. I only ask that if his property be
subjected to exceptional taxation, by the caprice of a Minister and his majority, he
should not be deprived of the only methods known to our Constitution by which an appeal to
his fellow-countrymen may possibly be secured.

The trust of the matter is that the present attack on the House of Lords is but the
culmination of a long-drawn conspiracy. The Government came into office, not to work the
Constitution of the country, but to destroy it. They desire what is in effect a single
Chamber Legislature. The Second Chamber may be permitted to survive, partly changed so
long as names remain the same; partly to correct the legislative slips of the Lower House
which, under our existing system, are numerous, and I believe inevitable. But they desire
that for all important purposes the Constitution of Britain shall be as definitely a single
Chamber Constitution as the Constitution of Guatemala. For this end they have continuously
laboured. It is this policy which represents the solitary thread of constitency connecting
the wayward legislative projects of the last four years.

I have watched with interest the progress of this conspiracy. Its results must so far have
disappinted the conspirators. On no single occasion when Bills have been rejected by the Upper
House or abandoned in the Lower on the alleged grounds that they had been mutilated by the
Lords, has the rising tide of the Ministerial unpopularity shown the slightest pause or
check. Then came the Budget; and with it the opportunity of manoeuvring the House of Lords into
the positino of either abandoning its functions as a Second Chamber or of taking action
which might give new life and hope to the contrievers of the single Chamber plot.

The scheme was ingenious. I do not thinkg it is proving successful. The people of this country
are not insulted by having their opinion asked on the Budget, nor do they think that the
House of Lords has gone beyond their duty in asking for it. And they are surely right. For the
single Chamber system is not consistent with the democratic working of representative
Government in complex and developing communities. The representative Assembly is no doubt
the primary organ of the popular will, and it possesses powers in this country which it
certainly does not possess either in the Republic of America or in the Republic of France. It
determines without appeal the political complexion of the Government. It controls all the
Estimates. In initiates all the taxes. In legislation it is the dominating partner. The
Ministers who direct, and sometimes tyrannize over, its deliberations, are nevertheless its
creatures; and while no vote of the House of Lords could reduce the salary of an
Under-Secretary by a shilling, the most powerful Cabinet must bow to the House of Commons.

These are great powers; in some respects they are, I believe, without example. But they do not
satisfy the single Chamber conspirators. And why? Because they wish the House of Commons to
be independent, not merely of the Peers, but of the people.

Nor would there be grave objection to this if there was any security that the action of the
elected embodied on all great and far-reaching issues the deliberate will of the electors.
But there is not and cannot be any such security. It is only by a transparent convention
that we can, for example, assume that a House of Commons returned on the cry of Chinese slavery
represents the mind of the nation on the question of Socialism. And the convention, which
is convenient and in many respects even necessary, because not merely absurd, but perilous,
when it is applied to questions of fundamental importance, which have been but imperfectly
discussed, which are perhaps but imperfectly understood, which deeply affect individual rights
and social well-being.

In such cases there should be an appeal from the people's representatives to the people
themselves; and no machinery, however imperfect, for securing this end should be abandoned
until a better has been devised.

In any case the single Chamber system is impossible. And it is as impossible in the region of
finance as in any other. If finace meant in 1909 what it used to mean in earlier days, the
question would be unimportant. But directly the need for money is used by a Government as an
excuse for adopting the first instalment of a Socialist Budget, for treating property not
according to its amount, but according to its origin, and for the vindictive attack on
political opponents, then the people have a right to be consulted; and that right could never
have been exercised had the Peers not used on behalf of the people the powers entrusted to
them by the Constitution.

If you ask me whether this constitutional machinery could not be improved, either by some
change in the composition of the House of Lords, or by the institution of a Referendum, I am
certainly not going even to suggest a negative reply. The House of Lords as at present
constituted contains, I suppose, more men of first-class eminence in the business of law,
of arms, of literature, of science, and of finance, more men who have held great
administrative posts overseas, more men in daily touch with local business than the House of
Commons. Its debates on great occasions (for reasons in no way derogatory to the Chamber in
which I hope to spend all the working days of my political life) are on a more even level of
excellence. Nor would it, I think, be wise to turn it into a second and rival House of
Commons and make it completely elective. But this does not mean that, even for its
comparatively subordiate, though all-important, constitutional functions, it cannot be
improved. Nor is any such opinion held by its most distinguished members.

But schemes of reform, however desirable, are but remotely connected with the present issue.
It is not so much the privileges of the Lords which are threatened by the single Chamber plot,
as the rights of the people. It is in their interest that the plot must be defeated.

On the Budget itself I have already said so much elsewhere, that I need say little now.
I am interested in it chiefly as it affects security, and through security the prosperity of
the country and the employment of its people. For here it touches the problems, or rather
groups of problems, which lie at the very heart and centre of social well-being.

I say groups of problems because unemployment is not a single disease, nor can it be dealt
with by a single remedy. It is as complex in its causes as it is tragic in its results. A man
may be unemployable through inherited defects of body or mind, through evil training and
surroundings, through illness, accident, or age, through the slow deterioration which too
often creeps over those who have wasted hope and courage, not in the endeavour to do something,
but in the baffled search for something to do.

Again, a man through employable may be unemployed, either because he and some willing
employer do not get into touch, or because there is no demand for the kind of work he is
qualified to perform.

This brief statement is, of course, incomplete; but even as it stands it shows how
complicated is the social problem before us. It has long been evident that it cannot be
solved through the machinery of the existing Poor Law. Since the Commission appointed
by the late Government have reported, it has become plain that the Poor Law machinery
cannot even aid in its solution. For every member of that Commission, Unionist and
Radical, offical and unofficial, Individualist and Socialist, agreed, after exhaustive
inquiries, that the machinery of the Poor Law must be 'scrapped'.

The task thus imposed upon us must be faced. But it is difficult, and in some respects
perilous. The sentimentalist and the doctrinaire, the man who thinkgs that other people's
misfortunes are part of an appointed order requiring on his part the exercise of no virtue
but resignation; the enthusiast who is prepared to tax two men out of employment in order to
compensate one man for being unemployed - all these represent types of criticism which in
an unfavourable hour, may prove formidable to the best considered schemes. In truth, this
great and pressing reform requires caution as well as courage. If we succeed, the amount
of suffering which may be cured or prevented is beyond computation. If we fail (but I think we
shall not), we may end by increasing the very ills we desire to remedy.

It is important, however, to observe that State-organised methods of dealing with destitution,
either by way of prevention or cure, can do little directly to promote the market demand for
labour. They may add to the labour supply - as by turning the unemployable into the employable.
They may render the supply more available - as by the stablishment of labour exchanges. They
may increase the number of workmen weeking for employers, but they will not increase the
number of employers seeking for workmen. Yet, surely, this is at least as important an
object as is the other. If the wise and humane treatment of those who cannot support themselves
belong to social pathology, the encouragement of enterprise belongs to social hygiene. And
how from this point of view do the fiscal policies compare of Government and Opposition?

The Budget, now waiting the sentence of the people, seems designed of set purpose to make
every man who has invested his money in this country consider how he can remove it, and every
man who is hesitating where to invest it, determine to invest it abroad. The super-tax
frightens some, the new death duties cripple others, and worse then all, the origin of the
proposals and the principles on which they have been defended, show clearly how thin is the
dividing line which separates the policy of the Government from that of the avowed Socialists.

Such is, and must be, the effect of the Budget and Budget speeches on the mind of the
investor. Very different are the results I anticipate from Tariff Reform.

There are those who regard it as a paradox to say that Tariff Reform will stimulate
home industry. It seems to me a truism. Only by Tariff Reform can you hope to retain
colonial preference; only by Tariff Reform can you hope to modify commercial treaties
in your favour. Only by Tariff Reform can you secure from unfair competition the home
producer in the home market. It will do him no injury in neutral markets, it may give him
valuable aid in protected markets. Is it credible, then, that it will not keep capital
here that would otherwise go abroad? Is it credible that, if it does, the demand for labour
will not increase?

On other aspects of Tariff Reform I will here say nothing. The very fact that it is the first
'plank' in the Unionist programme has prevented it every receiving less than its due need of
attention, whether from friends or foe.

But some observation on land I must make; for on the subject of land no absurdity in argument,
and no folly in legislation, seems wholly ruled out of court.

The Government began their career by loudly proclaiming the doctrine known as 'Back to the
land'. It might have been supposed, in these circumstances, that they would have done their
best to make the position of the small cultivator as attractive as possible. Not at all.
The life on the small cultivator living solely on his holding is often a hard one - harder
often than that of the agricultural labourer. He is not within easy reach of the urban
amusements which attract so many, and in our climate the risks of weather can neither
be forgotten nor escaped. These are disadvantages. But there is one great advantage of
ownership. The hope of this may bring him to the land. The enjoyment of it may keep him there.
But it is just this that the Government in their wisdom refuse to give him. They have some
vague idea that private ownership in land is a thing to be discouraged. They do not, I gather,
think it criminal, like Henry George. They do not argue, like the land nationalists, that
since 'the earth is the Lord's' therefore its rents should go to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. But they do apparently think ownership a little discreditable except in the case
of the Irish farmer. To make him a proprietor, British credit may, indded, be lavishly
employed. But a different policy is good enough for Britain. Here the possession of land
is treated almost as an abuse. Those who indulge in it shall be made to pay: and nothing
shall be done to increase their number.

This being, so far as I can make out, their view, they insist that the small holders
should be tenants and (in England at least) tenants of a public body. now there is not a
farmer of sense in the whole of Great Britain who would not reather be a tentant of Mr
Lloyd George's favourite duke than of any public authority from Caithness to Cornwall. Their
whole way of looking at the problem is illogical and absurd. If it be desirable that money
should be spent on the land with slight hopes of profit, property in land should not be
talked of as an abuse. If it be desirable that small cultivators should give long hours of
toil to the development of their holdings, the reward of possession should be within their
reach.

In this address I am compelled to restrict myself to broad constitutional issues and
certain great social and financial problems. I am thus perforce constrained to be silent
about the navy, but this is of the less importance, as I have spoken more than once in the
City upon this great theme since the perilous position of the country first became evident
earlier in the year. The situation remains grave and the future is anxious. I do not think
the public will readily forget or forgive the lamentable negligence which so dangerously
encouraged the very rivalry in shipbuilding which they have so often and, I doubt not, so
sincerely deplored.

Here, then, I close what is not and cannot be more than an indication of certain important
portions of the policy which I trust our party will pursue. To maintain the Empire, the
Union and the Constitution, these are among the traditional obligations of the party which gain
rather than lose in force as time goes on. But we have more to do than merely to preserve what
we have received. The world moves, new conditions arise, problems of Empire, problems of
trade, problems of national finance, problems of national defence, problems of social
amelioration meet us in forms not dreams of a few years since. They must be solved each in its
own appropriate way. But, diverse as they are, it will, I think, be found that no
substantial advance can be made towards the solution of any one of them, till a change of
Government takes place, and a party is returned to office prepared to press through to the
utmost of its powers they policy of Tariff Reform.